Email to work, phone to network
“The email is a great working tool. The phone is a great networking tool.”
Last month I ran a workshop at an executive MBA program of a Spanish business school. One of the ideas I emphasized is that email is such a great working tool that we tend to forget the phone as a medium to contact new people.
One of the participants came to see me at the end. She said, “You’re right, we need to talk to people and use less email. I will tell my boss that an expert told us so. I will try to convince him to talk more to me instead of sending me emails!”
My reply: “Well… My comments during the workshop referred to tools to use for networking, which can be different from the working tools you have in your office.”
Then I reiterated, “Talking to people is great when networking. However, using the phone might not be the most efficient tool for day-to-day communication. You can use one set of tools to contact new people and another set to communicate with your colleagues.”
Of course, there are situations when your preferred option might not be the phone, as I pointed out in a previous post (see “Email For First Contact? Only In Specific Situations“).
Let me say it again: “The email is a great working tool. The phone is a great networking tool.”
(Note: I do not receive sponsorship from phone companies! 
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